Chapter 14 Sol #4
I move closer to him, filling the space beside him, the scent of beer, cider, and people heavy in the air. “Dunno.”
“You wrote it.”
“Did I?”
Jack snorts. “Maybe you should draw me a picture next time.”
“Got news for you, Jackie. I can’t draw either.”
True story. Left alone, I can read a library in a week. Ask me to write my own book it’d be shapes and crayon. Skylar calls it dysgraphia. Says it’s more common than we know. Me? I reckon it’s got more to do with bunking off school to chase the mackerel catch, but I guess it doesn’t matter anymore.
“Was it important?”
Jack’s Killinchy accent is thick enough tonight that I know he’s spent time with Mal.
I study the scrawled note, trying to bury the grief that I never met their ma.
That all I know of her is a couple of grainy photos, Jack’s comfort meal of jam on wheaten toast, and the fact he almost died the same way she did.
“I put money in the till. You said it was short after I worked the close-down shift the other day.”
Jack frowns, thinking, remembering. “It was short because I paid the coal delivery with cash and forgot about it.”
“Oh.”
“I guess that explains why we’ve had too much money this week.” Jack drops the note in the till and sets his big hands on my bare shoulders. “But even if it didn’t, the tills are up and down all the time. You don’t need to ever put your hand in your pocket to fix it.”
“You like the tills to balance.”
“I like sunshine and sweet dreams too. Doesn’t mean it’s on you to make sure I get them.”
“Are you having bad dreams, love?”
Jack releases my shoulders, turning back to the till drawer. “I need to tell you something.”
Instant dread throttles my heart. “Are you okay?”
Jack’s slow to answer. Because he just is sometimes, when it takes him a minute to organise his words. But in a world where these pauses have often meant danger, the measured breath he takes seems to last a week. “I knew Folk Whitlock before I got hurt.”
Oh. Of all the things I thought he might say, I didn’t have that on my bingo card.
I hop the bar, claim a glass, and fire a shot of Kraken into it. Jack can’t drink it anymore, but I know he loves the sweet and spicy smell. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
Jack picks up a handful of coins. Counts them carefully before he drops them into the bag we need to bank in the morning. “I didn’t know.”
I freeze with the glass halfway to my lips. “You didn’t know?”
“I forgot.” Jack taps his temple. “And he didn’t know how to tell me, so he never did.”
“How did you find out then?”
Jack shrugs. “Guess he changed his mind.”
I force my arm into motion again. Neck the rum while Jack appraises me the way he used to when we were teenagers and I wanted to do something stupid. “So he told you then?”
“Yeah, a few nights ago. And it’s fucking weird, but it felt so…I don’t know…normal, maybe, that I forgot it was a thing and I haven’t really thought about it.”
“Because it makes sense that you know him?”
“Yeah. I mean, we’re from different units, but we fought the same wars, and…I’ve always felt he sees me, you know?”
“Because he’s a soldier?”
“Probably.” Jack pushes the till drawer away from him and sits up straight, stretching his back, and I resent the bar between us.
I want to rub his sore muscles.
Kiss his neck.
Run my fingers through his hair when he hums against my skin.
“Did you know?”
The question is sharper than I’m prepared for.
I start, wrenched from the warm, cosy place my meandering thoughts have taken me. “Know what?”
“That I knew Folk before.”
“No, Jackie. The first time I ever spoke to him was when he rode up to talk to you before Mal came home. Until then, I only knew his face as one of Cam’s lackeys.”
“I don’t think Whitlock is anyone’s lackey.”
“Yeah, okay,” I admit, agreeing with him. “But I didn’t know, I swear. Did Mal?”
Jack rumbles a low growl. “I asked him and his answer made no sense.”
I give into the urge to hop the bar again. Land at Jack’s side minus the empty rum glass as he turns on his stool to face me.
Instinct has me finding a home between his muscular thighs. Reality has me checking myself, taking half a step back before he curls one of those legs around me and hooks me back in.
Like this morning, I’m barely dressed. But I’m dry, which leaves Jack no reason to be touching my skin other than he wants to.
He ghosts a hand down my chest, skating his palm down my ribs.
The light touch is magic.
But.
I suppress a shiver and it’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done.
I’ve craved the heated purpose of his hand on my skin my whole life, but Jack’s eyes are moving too fast, trying to catch his thoughts and words before they spin from his grasp, and however dizzy and reckless I feel in this moment, my best friend needs my help.
It’s my turn to drop my hands on his shoulders. “What did Mal say when you asked him about Folk?”
Jack rubs his thumbs over my sternum. “He said Folk knew me too well…I think. And he noticed, but his own head was too fucked to see what that meant, even when Folk all but admitted it to him a while back.”
“Folk told him?”
“No, not exactly. I think he left enough clues for Mal to figure it out, but it didn’t happen. So he left it, and life keeps going, doesn’t it?”
It sure does. “How do you feel about it?”
“About what?”
“All of it. Does it piss you off no one told you?”
Jack nods, and perversely, the fraught energy in his brain starts to recede. “I’m not a fucking child.”
“That’s not why—”
“I know,” he cuts in. “And I wasn’t a cunt about it to their faces, but I don’t need protecting. If something’s going to fuck with my head, it just has to happen.”
The nausea from this morning comes back, expanding in my gut like a spider stretching its legs. This is it, the moment where my confession makes the most sense. But as my lips part to take a breath, Jack claims them for himself.
He kisses me. With that purpose again, and damn if he doesn’t nearly sweep me off my feet. As if he doesn’t wipe my brain clean of anything and everything except the raw need to kiss him back.
I don’t feel sick anymore.
No fear licks at my insides.
I just feel, and…
Jack’s grip on me tightens, hauling me against him with enough possession to soften my knees. He deepens the kiss. Digs his teeth into my bottom lip. We press closer and the thrumming in my ears goes wild.
I could drown in this and not care.
Maybe I will.
I slide my hands up Jack’s arms, his biceps an anchor I don’t want, and yet I lose myself in his unyielding flesh and bone. In his rough, low groan as he breaks the kiss to move down my body with his tongue and teeth. To take a sharp breath and lick—
Jack pulls back. “I can’t do this.”
I go utterly still, white noise an instant assault on my ears, a clutch of my darkest fears surging to the surface, every certainty that I’ve misread him and led him down a path he never wanted to tread rushing up on me in a dizzying wave.
My lungs are marble.
I don’t move.
Don’t breathe.
I die a slow, excruciating death as Jack growls a curse, his hands as frozen as my entire soul, as if he hasn’t realised he’s stopped touching and kissing me.
Or he’s forgotten why he did.
“Fuck,” he says again. Then he raises his gaze to meet mine, and he frowns with unfiltered focus. “That’s not—Sol, that’s not what I meant.”
What did you mean, Jack? But I can’t form the words. My heart is still trying to riot its way out of my chest. I can only wait for him to string a sentence together that won’t kill me.
“I meant I can’t put my hands on you like this until I know you’re okay.” His thumb brushes my jaw, careful now, demanding something more than the physical capitulation I crave so much. “Where did you go today?” he whispers. “Tell me, Sol. Please?”
Please.
The gravelled plea does me in. Something inside me gives way and I sag forwards, head dropping to my chest before Jack catches my chin and forces it up again.
“Is it your dad?”
I nod, and it all comes out—most of it, anyway.
I don’t tell him about the parts I’ve stripped from the Sirona and sold, or the money I’ve paid to the Kings for the stolen copper.
And lucky for me, Jack doesn’t ask too many questions.
Why would he? Of everything he’s forgotten, my dad’s ability to screw up my life on a regular basis isn’t one of them.
“How much—”
I silence him with a shaky finger to his lips. “No, Jackie. We’re not doing that. I can handle it, okay? I just need some time.”
He knocks my finger away. “You shouldn’t have to handle it.”
“I know, but life is what it is, eh? Maybe it’s what I need to endure to earn better things.”
“If that theory was true, you’d live in fucking paradise already.”
“Some days I do.” Jack’s hands are still on me. I lean into his touch and he smiles, which is paradise enough for me any day of the week.
But he’s not done. “Does Sev know?”
“I think Lisa might’ve told him something. He’s called me a lot today.”
“You didn’t pick up?”
A new wave of guilt gnaws at me. I crave the sanctuary of Jack’s embrace, but I need him to choose it.
So I shift and lean on the bar instead. “I’ll talk to him tomorrow.”
Jack lets it happen, waiting on my answer, even though his gaze keeps dropping to my bare chest. Where he bit me before this horrible conversation bulldozed its way through. “What’s different about tomorrow?”
“I don’t know. I just—” Just what? I don’t know that either. “Jackie, I’m tired.”
“Sol.” Jack moves as if he’s giving me time to stop him.
As if I ever would. Then he tugs me away from the bar, wraps his big arms around me, and though he hugs me most days, this feels different.
This feels like the first time in months the sand isn’t shifting under my feet.
It’s everything I need from my best friend, except one thing.
I nuzzle Jack’s neck. Then I wrench my head up, every instinct I have screaming at me not to. “I need you to promise me something.”
Jack’s getting tired too. I see it in his slow blink, and the way he has to consciously add resilience to his cognition as it starts to fray. “Anything.” He holds my face how he always does when he’s listening with every firing synapse he has. “Just tell me.”
My throat tightens so hard it hurts. “What I told you about Dav tonight, I need you to bury it. Don’t tell Mal or Skylar, or even think about trying to fix this with your own money.”
Jack’s brows pull together. “But—”
“No.” The word shears out of me, messy and loud. “I can’t live through that again. It still kills me that you gave him so much and he spaffed it up the wall a year later. Please, Jackie. I need this from you, I can’t fucking breathe otherwise, I can’t—”
“Okay, okay.” It’s Jack’s turn to silence me, his big palm sealed over my mouth, his lips at my temple. “I won’t tell anyone. I promise, Sol. I promise.”